Yay for Jen! :D

Jennie's book, Dragon's Birth, is available now from all good bookstores called "Samhain Publishing" ;-)

Here's the link:
http://www.samhainpublishing.com/dragonsbirth.shtml

Go buy it, now!

While you're there, check out the coming soon page for Kim's book, Buying Mackenzie's Baby:
http://www.samhainpublishing.com/buyingmackenziesbaby.shtml

...And once you're done there, you might want to pop over to Silk's Vault, where

Aline's Psychotic is available and Merris's Truth or Dare will soon.

WARNING!! These sites and books do contain sexual content; don't go there unless you're of an age for that to be okay - thanks :)


PS; by this time tomorrow there may be a few more to add to the list...
AQ results are just HOURS away now LOL - here's a handy countdown thingummy:

lulu fixed! yay!

Genie: 76 / 25 / 3 / ?
Abacus: 53 / 1 / 1 / ?

Oi it's good to clear that tension knot hehe

*double sniffle*

Tell me why I don't like mondays, Oh tell me why...

Actually *someone* I know must like Mondays a great deal right now... *Kim*

Meanwhile...

Less than 48 hours til I win diddly squat on AQ

Lulu still aint tracking sales

Genie: 75 / 17*LIE* / 3 / ?
Abacus: 53 / 1 / 1 / 21,334

I wonder if the sales will ever come back? I might cry, if not. I was having so much fun seeing how much income I wasn't earning...

*sniffle*

So, it's probably not a cold, it's probably a combination of him indoors's cricket dinner thing last night, and staying up til 5am playing singstar on friday. But I feel rough, and so the world is crap. Even tho' it isn't.

Lulu's non-royalty-sales dont' seem to be being tracked. So I've had a lovely new review for Genie and no shiny sales figures to boast of. Anyway:
Genie: 70 / 17*LIE* / 3 / ?
Abacus: 53 / 1 / 1 / 21,142

Yep, you read correctly, Abacus has a review :) Ok, so it's of the preview, but who cares? ;-) THANK YOU Andrew Anderson!

---

Other News:

Loads of new reviews on ER, any moment now; this week featuring some very handy back and next links LOL

Kim has a new cover, that she's not talking about heheh

Jennie's release date is imminent. No silly: for her book, of course! :-p

AQ deadline is like, so close and yet so far...

And my blog had a visit from the queen of snark, Jaynie :) I feel so proud! :-D

ooh

Cool. Lulu reliably informs me that (and this seems to be changing every time I look at the page)...

Customers who bought Genie also bought:
Being Chosen (Lisa Carter)
Flowers Quickly Fading (Anthony Barnhart)
Geneva's Promise (Payton Lee)
Higgaion (Victor Darnell Hadnot)
In Time To Come (Victor Darnell Hadnot)
Summer's Story (Nancy Famolari)
The Harvestman (Victor Darnell Hadnot)
The Horns Of The Unicorns (Victor Darnell Hadnot)
Save Me (Rebecca Abbott Miller)
The Land Shadowing With Wings (Victor Darnell Hadnot)
The Outsider (Payton Lee)

What seems to be the common trend? They're free, and they're romance, mostly...

Anyway.

Genie: 61 / 17 / 2 / ?

Abacus: 47 /1 / 0 / 20,971

My 2nd review!

Yay for UK Writers again! :-)

Genie: 57 / 17 / 2 / ?
Abacus: 44 / 1 / 0 / 20,922

And thanks to Steve Robinson :)

My first review ;-)

Yay for UK Writers :)

Ian Ruxton ( http://www.lulu.com/ianruxton ) read Genie and liked it (or, said that he did ;-) ) I'm a little embarrassed since he is a serious non-fiction type, and very grateful :-)

It's a bit early in the day for my tallies, but I guess I can edit them later :)

Genie: 53 / 16 /1 / ?

Abacus: 43 / 1 / 0 / 20,868

On another note, I found through this blog that there exists this page wherein the rules of romance writing include:
"The hero and heroine cannot be employed as a rock star, artist, writer, politician, entertainer or professional athlete. "


Yay!! I *have* a trashy rockstar story! I just *love* having rules to break :D Hmmm I wonder if I can make him a professional athlete, too... No, that would be silly: Whoever heard of a Vampire football player?? ;-)

Lulu

Genie: 46 / 15 / 0 / ?
Abacus: 41 / 1 / 0 / 20,868

Did I mention the UK Writers storefront?
http://www.lulu.com/ukwriters

VERY interesting mix of writers! LOL

Genie: 41 /13 / 0 / ?

Abacus: 40 / 1 / 0 / 20,923

I wish someone would rate Genie. I'm firmly convinced it's only being "bought" because it's free, and probably not being read at all. I'd rather get a bad rating than none LOL

Maybe.

Dunno. Perhaps time will tell LOL

That Friday Feeling...

...You know, the "if only I could concentrate" one?

Kim's book has its own page;
http://www.samhainpublishing.com/buyingmackenziesbaby.shtml

Meanwhile:
Genie: 39 / 12 / 0
Abacus: 39 / 1 / 0

Abacus's sales rank is now 20,845
An hour ago it was 20,798
*sob* ;-) I guess there have either been 47 $1.01 purchases since then, or one of $47?? Who can say LOL

...

When I first "published" Abacus, I posted...

Assuming, say, 7 views this week, before I move elsewhere in the listings, I reckon if I do absolutely nothing by way of promotion I'll get 20 views by the end of February, and 40 by the end of June. So by the end of June I expect either myself, enchanted ramblings or Peta to be 80cents richer.Whooo-hoooo! By this time next year, we'll be milwionaires, Rodders!

So, given that I expected 80c by end of June, and this has already happened, it stands to reason that I'll be a milwionaire by September. Fantastic! ;-)

Saturday looms...

I'm starting to worry about Saturday; I hear rumours of a billion reviews, a trillion interviews and gazillion newsletters (ok,one :) ) that are going on the "to do" list for
www.enchantedramblings.net - thank the gods I'm not the one creating all the content, is all I can say!

Of course, it's also kind of exciting, but I sincerely hope I am organised enough to get it all on the site, and properly LOL

lulu

Meanwhile...

Abacus: 37 / 1 / 0
Genie: 35 / 10 / 0

Lulu UK Writers Group

Yesterday, amidst great confusion, I found myself creator/moderator of a lulu group. Panic stations! I hadn't realised that requesting the group's creation would make me a moderator; end result I ended up enlisting three complete strangers (First to sign up) to also be mods. I'm sincerely hoping that it all works out! they seem to be "good people" so far LOL

It's for "UK Writers" (i requested it because there seemed to be a lot of UK specific concerns on the Lulu messageboards) and if you happen to be a lulu person, and happen to be interested, here is the home page:
http://people.lulu.com/lulu/group_home.php?group_id=351

:)

Aztechs and the power of brocolli

... oh all right: yes, I'm going to post about Lulu again ;-)

Abacus 33 / 1 / 0
Genie 29 / 9 / 0

...Abacus now has an official sales rank of 20,769
Coooollll... so close to the top twenty thousand hehe

Veering away from the numerical for just a brief moment, I'm hugely embarrassed by a post Kim made, begging people to learn how to play the elephant game: Hugely embarrassed and dead chuffed; particularly since she dared be associated with a self-publisher hehe (thanks Kim :D)

I HAVE A SALE!!!!

http://www.lulu.com/teebee

Abacus: 28 / 1 / 0
Genie: 24 / 8 / 0

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

To my dear lovely buyer who spent $1 of hard earned cash, whooever you are: YAYAYAYAYAYYAY :D

lulu sales ranks

OK, anything to avoid writing, right?

Sorting the romance category by sales rank, Abacus (0 sales) is on page 26 out of 44, here:
http://www.lulu.com/browse/index.php?fCLID=787&fOffset=26

From there on, it looks to be alphabetical. Looks like I did good with a title starting "A" hehe

Specifically, position six on p26

Genie (7 "FREE" sales) is on page 33, so I guess that sales don't count it they're free.

In other words: THEY'RE STILL EVEN-STEVENS!

Enchanted Reviews

Eeek, just hit "upload" on the first batch of "automated" reviews.
Hopefully they all look remarkably similar to the man-made versions...

And there's a length between them!

Genie : 20 / 7 / 0
Abacus: 18 / 0 / 0

And the race is on...

Abacus 18/0/0
Genie 18/6/0

How exciting ;-)
I feel like starting a race commentary...

fictionwise number crunching

Yes, I'm sad and I play with spreadsheets.
I'm also not a genius; believe these numbers at your own risk.

For the last 3 years, fictionwise has had a valentine's day sale, running for about a week eitherside of valentines day. By virtue of the fact that I'm ready and waiting with my "wishlist", I expect it's not going to happen.
Iif it does, here are some handy calculations for EU buyers... ;-)

If you pay with your card, you'll be charged VAT, at 17.5% ish
If you're really lucky you'll also get a per-transaction charge for paying overseas.

So, here are some possibilities, using Gaiman's Stardust, which is listed at $6.99.
Now, let's assume you are a buywise member.
This already gives you 15% off, so the price comes down to $5.94.
You also get a 5% rebate, because of the format, so your end cost is about $5.64. (£3.25)

If you pay by paypal, that's all there is to it.

If you pay by card, you'll get VAT slapped on top of the $5.94, so your total cost is $6.98.
Then you'll get a £1 charge (if you bank with LloydsTSB, don't know about others) so your total cost is going to be in the region of $8.75 (about £5)
Since the paperback costs £6.39 through Amazon, that's still a good price.

So, in conclusion: £6.99 = £3.25 by paypal or £5 by card)

Next tip, regarding rebates.
Suppose you have, like the cleversticks you are, loaded your account up with $18.10. It's a strange amount, but bear with me.
You want to buy two books at $6.99 and one at $7.99, with a total cost of $21.97
Apply the 15% discount on the total and you're goign to have to pay $18.68, right?

Not if they have a rebate going on.
a $6.99 discounts to $5.94
a $7.99 disounts to £6.79

If you buy the two £6.99 books first, you'll have:
$18.10
-$11.88
=$6.22

+$0.59
=$6.81

7.99 @ 85% = $6.79

So you have enough to buy all three books. Yay!

Now, buywise membership costs $29.95 per year.
You immediatley get a free ebook, worth upto $10 - this generally means a book worth $7.99.

So, you've still got $22 to save, if you want to get your money's worth.

So. Suppose you-as-non0member buy stardust at $6.99
you get a rebate of $0.35, so it really costs you $6.64

As above, it would costs a member $5.64

So, essentually you're saving a dollar a book.
If you buy more than 22 books per year then, it's worth signing up.

Howabout EU members? Well.
$29.95 plus VAT is $35.19
The $7.99 free book would have cost you $13.98
So you have $21.21 to save

As a nonmember, stardust costs $8.21
minus rebate; $7.86

As above, it would cost a member $6.98.

So, you are saving about $0.88

21.21/0.88 = about24

So EU members need to buy over 24 books per year to gain anything.

I can't get my head around the bank fine bit ;-)

(If there are proper mathematicians reading, please correct me!!)

genie 15/6/0
abaucs 17/0/0

oooh they are getting close, aren't they?

Genie: 14 / 6 / 0
Abacus 17 / 0 / 0

(that's page views, downloads and ratings...)

I've just finished Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere: Excellent read. Got all the way to the end without realising that it was the "american version": Not until I read the interview in the back did I realise it said "sidewalk" instead of "pavement", throughout. I mean, I obviously noticed it but some part of me thought perhaps Gaiman was american, despite saying hi to Lenny Henry at the front of the book. Made me think, though; since the story was set in London, shouldn't he, "for accuracy" have stuck to our native words? Can't be bothered to think about it more: Excellent book, anyway :)

blimey

Genie 12/5 - four hits since yesterday?

Abacus 16/0

So it looks like genie (free) is getting one download for every 2 page views.

Meanwhile Abacus is forlorn and unloved *sob* ;-)

Positionwise, and in date order..

"General Romance" (great character name hehe) - Abacus is on page 3, Genie on page 2

"Contemporary Romance" - Abacus is still on page 1, though now at the base

"Fantasy blahblahblah" - Geneie is at pos. 2 on page 1

Genie: 8/3
Abacus: 15/0

20 views by the end of February for Abacus? Still looks a *possibility* :)

genie: 6
abacus: 14

Yes, yes. I'm obsessed: I know, I know..

Lulu.

Genie. Free. 4 views, 2 downloads, no ratings.
Abacus. $1. 12 views, no downloads, no ratings.

Also, http://www.lulu.com/teebee has been indexed by google, which is cool as it's picking up the link to ER. However - *blimey*!! That was quick! LOL Makes me thinking it's worth getting a lulu storefront just as a links generator thingy LOL

Interesting...